A Sword from Red Ice

TWENTY-SEVEN A Castleman for a Year

Dalhousie Selco, the swordmaster at Castlemilk, kept an hourglass slung around his neck on a chain and used it as a torture device. If you as much as glanced at it he'd grab the chain and twist it, turning the hourglass from vertical to horizontal. Stopping time. Only when he was satisfied that you and the other young men he was training had been suitably punished did he twist the chain back and let time run.

Bram was learning fast: Best not even to look at the swordmaster, let alone his glass. That path led to double trouble. Trouble from Dalhousie now. Trouble from the other boys later. You made him give us an extra fifteen minutes—in the snow.

It was true enough. They were training on the smallest of the three swordcourts at the rear of the roundhouse, and when they'd trudged out before noon and Dalhousie had directed them to the only court that had not been cleared of snow they all thought he'd made a mistake. No one had dared say so. Though Enoch had whispered to Bram, "Either Housie's off his nut or he's going to make us shovel snow." Whispering was a grave error in the swordmaster's presence. If he heard you he would whack your shoulder with his wooden scabbard. Luckily for Enoch there was snow: five pairs of feet crunching through it on their way to the swordcourt had provided sufficient noise to camouflage his offense.

Even when it had become obvious that Dalhousie had not made a mistake and did indeed intend to put them through their forms while making them stand in two feet of snow, the full extent of his evil plan had yet to be revealed. Bram had trained with Jackdaw Thundy, the old swordmaster at Dhoone, and he knew that any swordmaster worth his salt was tough and demanding. He hadn't known they were capable of torture.

"Castlemen," Dalhousie had shouted when they were all assembled on the court. "Pull off your left boots and let's get moving."

Bram Cormac, Enoch Odkin, Trorty Pickering and Shamie Weese, known as Beesweese, had looked at each other, round-eyed and blinking.

"Now!" roared Dalhousie.

At first Bram had been glad he had his socks on—tube-shaped sheaths of rabbit skin rendered bald by constant use—but after five minutes of plunging his foot in and out of the snow the material had become wet and icy and he ended up pulling it off. At least the bare skin could dry off a bit between dunkings. Dalhousie had set them in pairs—Bram against Enoch, Trotty against Beesweese—and made them stand opposite each other while they took turns executing and defending forms.

"Swan's neck! Bluddsmen's farewell! Hammer cut! Harking's needle!" Dalhousie Selco marched from one end of the court to the other, shouting out the forms. Every so often he would explode into motion, and his chosen victim would have to defend himself against a series of attack forms while screaming out their names. Occasionally Dalhousie would throw in a new form, and Gods help you if you mistook it for something else.

"If you don't know it cover you body and step backl"

It left Bram's ears ringing. Dalhousie had the loudest voice he had ever heard.

"Cormac. What's the difference between a swordsman and a man with a sword?"

Bram had been moving through a series of high blocks, defending against Enoch's head blows, while trying to keep his bare foot out of the snow. He was still not accustomed to being called Cormac and it took him a moment to realize that Dalhousie was addressing him. The rule on the swordcourt was that you never broke away from an engagement to answer questions. You shouted out as you fought. Training," screamed Bram.

"No," Dalhousie belllowed. "Experience. A man knows nothing until he's been in a genuine blood-spurting, puke-making, knuckle-bursting sword brawl. You can train every day between here and damnation and you'll still be a fool with a sword. You have to get out there and fight, see a man's eyes and know he's scared shitless, and realize he's seeing the exact same thing staring back." With that Dalhousie launched himself at Bram.

Sword high from countering head blows, Bram was forced into an awkward lower-body block. Elbow up and extended, wrist pivoting inward, he lost control of his sword the instant the first blow hit. Metal screeched as Dalhousie used Bram's sinking blade as a fulcrum to turn his sword point into the center of Bram's gut. As Bram felt the hard jab of blunted steel against his navel, a second blow cut him on the side of the neck. Enoch Odkin.

"Good work," Dalhousie told the lanky Castleboy. He had nothing to say to Bram.

Enoch gave Bram a little shrug when the swordmasters back was turned. He was older than Bram, probably sixteen or seventeen, with blue-black hair and thick downy eyebrows that met in the middle. He'd rolled his left pant leg up to the knee, revealing stupendously hairy legs and the kind of scars that stableboys got from being kicked by unfamiliar horses. His foot was bright pink with cold.

Bram decided he held no grudge against him. He also decided he'd had enough of defending and went on the attack. Enoch raised his sword and stepped back, sending his tender pink toes into the snow. Bram cut sideways with his sword, forcing Enoch to set down his entire foot. A second cut, a perfect mirror of the first, caused Enoch to shift his weight to the side. His bare foot lost traction for the briefest instant; Bram knew this because he saw the momentary loss of control register in Enoch's eyes. It was a small thing then to slide under his guard and stick him in the ribs.

That was when Bram had made the mistake of looking at Dalhousie and his hourglass. He wanted to see if the swordmaster had watched the exchange between him and Enoch, and unfortunately his gaze fell short of Dalhousie's head. They were, at that point, well into the last third of sand and probably had less than a quarter to go before they could pull on their boots and defrost their feet Yet when Dalhousie saw Bram looking in the direction of the glass, he smacked his lips and stopped time. Trotty and Beesweese slowed their sword strikes to look over at Enoch and Bram. Enoch put his eyebrows to work, raising them up and sideways in the direction of Bram Cormac.

"Fight on," Dalhousie warned. He didn't start time again for fifteen minutes. By the end of the session Bram's toes were so numb that he could no longer tell when they touched the ground. He had to look. The pain in his heel where chilblains were forming felt strangely unrelated to the cold. It was as if someone had taken a razor to his foot and chopped it into squares. When it came time to put his boot on, he couldn't do it, and just sat in the snow and looked at it.

"Put it on," Dalhousie said approaching, his voice pitched at a volume below loud. "I know it's only a wee walk back to the house, but do it. A swordsman never neglects his body."

Bram wrung out the rabbit sock and pulled it on. It felt like slime, but he didn't think he'd get the boot on without it.

"Good. Do you know why I made you take it off?"

"No."

Dalhousie squatted on the flattened snow. He wasn't a big man, but it was easy to forget that. His hair was short, and so thick and curly it seemed to have muscles. Unlike his beard, it showed no gray. "You never know what you're going to get in a melee; mad men not caring if they get ripped to pieces as they come at you, a one-to-oner turning into a one-to-three, acid thrown on your back, pants falling around your ankles, blood in your eyes, open wounds, frostbite. Me facing you and politely exchanging blows is not how it happens. A good swordsman knows how to fight through surprises. He's prepared to be unprepared."

Bram nodded.

Dalhousie had upended the hourglass around his neck and yellow sand was running through the globes. "You're quick, I'll give you that And you can make your size work for you. Come see me in the Chum Hall at dawn and I'll show you a couple of knee stickers."

Bram eased on his boot as he watched the swordmaster cross over to Beesweese, exchange a few words on his technique, and then head off to the house. He was tired and beaten up and he knew he would get a big braise on his neck where Enoch Odkin had sneaked him. It would go with the others he'd gotten over the past days. And then it would simply go.

Hauling himself up from the snow, he realized his pant seat was soaked through. This, together with his half-numb foot, didn't make for a pleasant walk back. The sun was behind clouds and the air hovered just above freezing. The kitchen gardens, walled garden, stable court, playground and cattle standing were lumpy with new snow. Two grooms were trying to force the stable doors open through thick drifts. A big white dog was barking at them.

A Castleman for a year. Bram reached into his tunic and slipped his new, alien guidestone from its hidden pouch. The gray liquid was suspended in water, and held in a stoppered vial made of cloudy gills. At one time Bram had believed that only the head warrior wore his Milkstone in this manner, but now he knew that all Castlemen and women wore theirs in much the same way. The difference was that Harald Mawl was allowed the privilege of display. All others, including the Milk chief herself, must show discretion when wearing their portion of powdered guidestone. It was a small thing, but Wrayan Castlemilk had been right when she said such small things made a clan.

Bram had seen her little since that day by the gravepool. She had attended the swearing of his First Oath, causing no small ripple of surprise when she stepped forward to accept Bram's swearstone and act as second to his oath. Bram had at first been relieved. Every yearman worried about that moment—who, if anyone, would step forward and back him? No one wanted to stand before his clan, alone and in silence, unclaimed. Yet afterward Bram had thought about it and wondered if he really wanted a chief holding the stone that was under his tongue as he spoke the Castlemilk oath.

"I will keep the Castlewawk between the Milk and the Flow and stand ready to fight for one year." It was a simple oath, unlike Dhoone's, and it did not claim that extra day.

The ceremony had taken place outside the guidehouse, in view of the Milk River, with the sun setting between ships of crimson cloud. It was the first oath Bram Cormac, brother to the Dhoone king, had spoken. He was a clansman: it would not be his last.

His days had been busy since then, filled with names and customs in need of learning, and the three separate and distinct pursuits that filled his day. Pol Burmish, the warrior who had greeted Bram at the door on that first night, had taken him to meet the swordmaster the morning after First Oath, and his training had begun in earnest. Swordfighting was taken more seriously here than at Dhoone and the level of swordcraft was higher. Bram had thought himself proficient with the longsword. He was wrong. At Dhoone he had been judged too small to train for the hammer and ax, and had taken up the sword instead. He was Mabb Cormac's son and people said he had some of his father's skill. It was a confusing time, Mabb promised to train him, then died. Jackdaw Thundy, the old swordmaster, had a stroke and retired, and was replaced by Ewall Meal, who had been Mabb Cormac's old rival. Ewall had liked the son little better than the father, and the training sessions had not gone well. "You're too small, boy. Step aside and let the next man have a go." Bram had stopped attending the sessions. After that he trained alone. Sometimes Mabb's old comrade-in-swords, Walter Hoole, would spend an hour or two with him in the evenings, putting him through his forms as he retold old stories about the glory days of Mabb and Walter. Often he was drunk. Bram had no way to gauge his progress, and had no longer been sure that he wanted to continue training. And then the Dog Lord invaded Dhoone.

Bram let himself in to the creamy maze of the Milkhouse. He had worked out the orientation of most of its corridors and doors and no longer had to figure direction by sunlight. Which was good. It meant he could get around on overcast days, and at night. But he had noticed things, absences where there should be chambers, or rather a lack of access to those chambers. He saw the ground floor of the roundhouse clearly in his mind's eye and knew there were spaces he had yet to enter.

Those spaces played on his mind. Rumor had it that histories were kept there; secrets about the clanholds and the Sull that had been hidden for hundreds of years. Bram had worked out the location of one of the secret chambers—it was located behind the west stairwell and adjacent to the women's solar—but a sense of honor kept him from searching for the entrance. Still, he would dearly have liked to see what lay inside it. And sometimes he thought that honor was a sham.

Realizing that he was hungry and late for his work in the guide-house, Bram glanced toward the kitchen. Breakfast had been fried apples and veined cheese, but that had been half a day ago. He could smell baking, and frying—Castlemilk's cook worked frequently with boiling oil—and decided not to resist. Limping at full speed, he made his way through the roundhouse and out the other side.

The kitchen was bustling. The benches were filled with women, children, seasoned warriors and old-timers taking their noonday meal The noise was close to deafening. Cook and his helpers were clanging pots and trivets, pitchforking sides of venison from vats of sizzling fat and stoking the ovens with giant pokers. Heat and steam and cooking smells combined to form a force that pushed through the air like wind. Bram hurried to the food tables, glad to see that no full-sworn warriors were waiting to be served. Men with lifetime oaths to their clans were always fed first. Pol waved a greeting from the back, and the head dairyman, little crotchety Millard Flag, shouted something about the skimming needing to be redone by the end of the day. Bram nodded an acknowledgment. There was no fooling Millard: do a hasty job and he knew it. Grabbing a fried pastie filled with lamb and onions, Bram tucked his head low and prayed to make it to the guidehouse without anyone stopping him to give orders.

The pastie was hot and juicy and it burned his tongue when he bit into it. Once he'd made his way through kitchen's east door and outside, he scooped a handful of snow from the ground and packed it into his mouth. His numbed toes were just beginning to come alive in his boot and they felt grossly swollen, like they could split the leather. His limp got worse and he had to slow down to manage the short climb up the embankment to the guidehouse.

Castlemilk's guidestone was housed in a separate building two hundred feet east of the roundhouse situated on a raised bank above the Milk. It was a large timber-framed structure that looked like a barn, and had the same double — size two-story doors as most barns. And a door within the door. A brick chimney had been built against the north-facing wall and Bram could see black smoke rising above the tarred wood roof. A single set of footsteps stamped lightly into the snow led from the roundhouse to the guidehouse. None led back. Finishing off the last of his pastie, Bram followed the footsteps like a path.

The door set within the door was closed but unlocked, and Bram lifted the polished pewter latch and entered. Dimness and smokiness enveloped him. It was like entering a building after a fire. The smell of charring seedpods and river weed was sharp and throat constricting, and Bram had to fight the impulse to cough. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he marked the red glows of smokefires placed at regular intervals around the perimeter of the room. This was the stone chamber, yet he could not yet see the stone.

"You are late." Drouse Ogmore, clan guide of Castlemilk, stepped from behind a wall of smoke. Dressed in unfinished pigskins with the hairs still attached and the worm rings and slaughter scars visible, he looked like a member of the wild clans. Short and powerfully built, with black hair and dark skin, he was holding a shovel as if he meant to harm someone with it.

'Take it," he said to Bram, thrusting it toward him. "Clear the area outside the door."

"The small door?"

Drouse Ogmore answered this question with a single, withering look.

Both big barn doors then. As Bram's hand closed around the handle of the shovel and began to move back, Drouse Ogmore pulled in the opposite direction. "The past two days you have been late. You will respect this stone. You will not be late again."

Bram nodded, and Ogmore released his grip on the shovel.

"Come and see me when you're done."

As he moved toward the door, Bram saw two green eyes watching him from the shadow of the guidestone. Nathaniel Shayrac, Drouse Ogmore's assistant, and the one who had made the footsteps in the snow, stepped forward and opened the door for Bram. And then shut it hard against his back.

Bram frowned at the snow. He felt bad about what Drouse Ogmore had said and wished he hadn't stopped at the kitchen for food. Ogmore had taken his oath and offered him occupation in the guide-house. "When your brother wins hack Dhoone come and see me. The future might not he as dire as you think." Those were the words Ogmore had said to him all those weeks ago on the Milkshore when had they laid Iago Sake to rest in the manner of the Old Clans. Ogmore had acted as guide for Dhoone that day, floating the oil and igniting it, incinerating Sake's corpse. Bram had not spared the meeting a thought while he was at Dhoone, but the Castlemilk guide had not forgotten him.

Eight days ago after Bram had spoken First Oath, Ogmore had invited him back to the guidehouse. "Come view the stone," he had said, "and I will prepare your yearman's portion."

Bram had only ever seen one guidestone before and that was Dhoone's. The Dhoonestone was less than forty years old and its edges were quarry-sharp. Vaylo Bludd had stolen the old stone, and Sumner Dhoone, the Dhoone chief, had moved swiftly to replace it. Bram had not known what an old stone looked like, the scars, the cavities, the oil and mineral stains, the fissures, and cutting faces, and molds. The Milkstone was an ugly chunk of skarn mottled with iron pyrites and flawed with chalk. It was not level and its west face was braced with a scaffold made from bloodwood logs. Bram had stood and looked at it, astonished that a stone could look so … used.

"Approach it," Ogmore had said. "You've earned that right"

By speaking the oath? Bram wondered. He had stepped toward it, immediately feeling the coolness it cast on the surrounding air. Up close he could see the rasp marks and drill holes and he had the sense that this was a living, working stone. The Dhoonestone lay like a fossil in the guidehouse; ill regarded and barely viewed. It was the shame of it, he believed. No Dhoonesman could look upon it without knowing they'd been bested by a seventeen-year-old boy from Bludd. The Milkstone was different, proud and aging, no longer steady on its feet but still useful, still aware.

Bram had been unsure whether or not to touch it This is my guide-stone, he told himself, forcing his hand up. When his fingers were a pin's length from the stone he felt a force, like a magnet attracting metal, pull them in. Sucking in his breath he made a small, astonished sound, and watched as his hand homed to the stone.

It showed him things, flooding them into his thoughts in waves that hit in quick succession. A river fork. A man in a bearskin hat. Wrayan Castlemilk bouncing his swearstone in her hand. Robbie smiling and saying, Do it Bram saw a dense forest of trees and something rippling through them. Waterf? he questioned uneasily, before the stone snatched the vision away. After that he could not keep up with the flood of images, they crashed against him and fled. Parchment unrolling. A room cased in lead. A second river forking …

His hand snapped back, jolted and released, and his arm whiplashed with the shock. Exhaling in a great push he realized he had been holding his breath. For a minute he just stood there, breathing and staring at the palm of his hand, as the jolt the guidestone had given him dissipated through muscle and bone.

Drouse Ogmore's voice had broken through his daze. "You will spend half of each day here, working for me. Tomorrow I will expect you at noon."

The guide must have seen some of what had happened, Bram realized later, for he was standing all the while by the door, yet he had never mentioned it, and never again urged Bram to touch the stone. Deciding he'd better get started, Bram put his good foot to the shovel and started digging out snow. He'd been helping at the guide— house for seven days now and it was not the sort of work he would have imagined. He had thought he would learn secrets and history. Surely guides must know the clan histories? Legend had it that when the clanholds won their territory from the Sull the guides drove giant war-carts into battle. Some said that the guidestones themselves were loaded onto those cartbeds. Bram got excited just thinking about it. Such a sight would have been wondrous to see. Why didn't Ogmore talk about that?

The Milk guide just broke rock. He spent most of his days up the stepladder chiseling rock from the stone's northern face, or at his work bench breaking, grinding and sorting the fragments. Sometimes he would use the bow drill, bracing it against his chest with a wooden tile, as he yanked it back and forth. At the rear of the roundhouse there was a stone mill, the kind that could be driven by an ox, but Bram had yet to see Ogmore use it. When Bram asked him about it, the guide had favored him with one of his withering stares. "At Castlemilk we do not waste the gods' breath unless we must."

Considering this statement later, Bram had decided Ogmore was referring to the dust that would get blown away in the wind if the guidestone fragments were ground outside. Certainly Ogmore was obsessed with collecting every last mote that dropped on the guide-house floor. Bram was allowed to sweep only when all doors and windows were closed, and when Ogmore was drilling through one of the hallowed planes of the stone, Bram had to be sure to set down a sheet to capture the sacred powder.

That was another thing he'd learned: Not all parts of the stone were equal. Ogmore divided the Milkstone into faces and planes, and used different sections for different purposes. Ogmore did most of his work on the stone's north face, where the powdered guidestone was mined. Two days ago when word came from Dhoone that a Castlemilk warrior wounded in the retaking had succumbed to his injuries and died, Ogmore had taken his chisel to the southeast corner and cut out a heart-size wedge of stone. The stone there was rich with pyrites and difficult to work and Ogmore had to use pliers at times to cut through the metal. By the time he was finished he had produced something beautiful and gristly, a fitting substitute for a warrior's heart.

Yesterday Bram had watched as Ogmore tapped off a chalky segment from the guidestone's bulbous south face. "Swearstones," he'd replied when asked. None of it so far had been what Bram expected. It was strenuous work, and he'd fall into bed at night, aching and sweating, his eyes and throat scoured by dust. So far Ogmore had not allowed him to grind or sort the stone. He hauled it, swept it, oiled and cared for the tools, spread the dust sheets, split timber for the smoke fires, cleaned the workbenches, fetched water from the river, scrubbed the collecting basins and shoveled snow. Nathaniel Shayrac was permitted to grind and pan-sift the fragments, though no one but the guide himself ever took a chisel to the Milkstone.

Bram paused in his shoveling to survey his work. The double doors of the guidehouse now had a ten-foot space cleared around them, and some fairly neat mounds of chucked snow lay off to the sides. The question was: Would ten feet be enough? Bram thought of Ogmore, frowned and then resumed shoveling. Another five were called for.

He thought about the clan guide's riding to battle as he worked. That would be a fine thing, he decided. To be able to fight and possess knowledge all at once.

He was faint with exhaustion by the time he was done. His knees were loose and wobbly, and the sword blister on the right hand had swollen to the size of an eyeball and split He had to use his little finger to work the doorlatch.

Switching from the afternoon dazzle of snow to the shadows of the guidehouse took some adjustment, and Bram was caught off-guard when Nathaniel's pale face loomed close to his.

He tutted, shooting out missiles of bad breath. "How does it feel to have your brother sell you?"

Bram swung at him. Nathaniel was prepared and jumped back. Bram tried to track his shape in the murky dimness, thought he detected a movement and took a second swipe. Striking air, he fell off balance and couldn't get his treacherous knees to save him. As he fell Nathaniel punched him in the head.

'Young men," hissed Drouse Ogmore, "control yourselves."

The guide stood at the southeast corner of the guidestone and glared at them. Bram blinked. The guidehouse was rocking and he needed it to stop. For some reason he smelled skinned rabbit—the smell of his mother's workroom growing up.

"Take it," Ogmore said.

Bram wondered what he meant, and then something skin-colored and fan-shaped dropped into view. A hand.. Nathaniel's hand. It would help if he could keep it still. Tentatively, Bram sent up his own hand and watched as it swayed back and forth like pondweed before Nathaniel's came and gobbled it up.

The pain of the split blister being squeezed of its juice brought Bram round. Yanked to his feet, he sent everything he had to his knees, it was barely enough to keep him upright.

"I'll have no fighting in this guidehouse, do you hear me?" Ogmore's gaze darted between Bram and Nathaniel.

"He was"

"No excuses," snapped the guide, silencing Nathaniel. "You shame the gods with petty blame."

Nathaniels long face, with its uncommon amount of space between the nostrils and upper lip, colored hotly.

"Go to the roundhouse and fetch my supper." Ogmorc stared hard at Nathaniel until he moved. Then, turning to Bram, "You. In the back with me."

Bram concentrated on his knees as he followed Ogmore's swirling pigskins around the eastern face of the Milkstone.

The rear section of the guidehouse had been partitioned off from the main hall and several small rooms had been framed. Ogmore's private sleeping chamber was located here, as well as a small dining area, and stockrooms. Leading Bram into the dining area, Ogmore said, "Sit. Take some water."

Bram sat on the polished birch bench with great care, like a man who had drunk too much and was trying to conceal it The table was rocking and he thought he might be sick.

Perhaps realizing that it was going to take Bram some time to get to the water, Ogmore poured a cup and handed it to him. "Do you know why this guidehouse is made out of wood and not stone?

Anticipating that it would be better to speak than shake his head, Bram said., "No."

"The old clan guide, Meadmorn Castlemilk, designed it so that if it's ever besieged we can torch it and bum alive those who would steal our stone." Ogmore paused and then told Bram, "Drink."

Bram did. The water was cool and gritty.

"The Milkstone would not be burned. Changed perhaps, but not destroyed. Meadmorn reckoned it worth the risk." Drome Ogmore looked straight at Raif, his deep-set eyes gleaming in the light of the half-shuttered window. "A flaming can sometimes stop things from falling into the wrong hands."

Water gurgled in Bram s stomach as he realized that Ogmore was talking about Robbie.

"Count yourself lucky, Bram Cormac, that you are here."

He didn't come out and say it, but Bram knew what he meant Better to have been burned than stay in Robbie Dun Dhoone's hands. Bram made no reply. Robbie was his brother and he would die rather than speak a word against him.

Ogmore knew this. Resting bis powerful, scarred and callused hands on the table, he seemed satisfied at what he had said.

As the rocking in Bram s head subsided, he realized that the guide must have overheard Nathaniel's words. Why else speak of Robbie at this moment?

Ogmore was capable of reading thoughts, for he said, "Nathaniel is worried you will take his place as my apprentice."

Bram heard the rise in the guide's voice, and understood what it meant. He waited.

Ogmore stood and crossed the short distance to the window, Bram assumed he would close the shutter as the sun was fading and a frost was setting in, yet the guide threw it back— "Castlemtlk needs two things above all else," he said, looking east toward the Milkhouse and the broken Sull tower where Robbie Dun Dhoone and his men had garrisoned over winter. "Our numbers of young warriors are depleted, They have been wooed away by the promised glory of Dhoone, and we wait, and they do not return. Above all things a clan must be able to defend its borders and protect its house. I am clan guide and I do not say this lightly so hear me well: When a clan is under threat the gods must take second place. Our gods are hard and dread, but they made us what we are. And what we are is clansmen. Given a choice we will fight. The gods know this, and even if they do not forgive, they under-stand"

Turning from the window, his shoulders limned by failing light, Ogmore searched Bram's face. "So now you know the rankings. Warriors first Guide second. Yet there are many warriors …. and one guide. Tell me then, Bram Cormac, who is most important?"

Bram could not. He remained silent.

Ogmore appeared unsurprised yet at the same time stirred. "As we stand hear and speak Blackhail fails. Do you know why?"

"Their guidestone shattered."

"No." Ogmore spoke with force. "A new stone can be quarried, new powder can replace the old in warriors pouches, it is possible to recover over time from such blows, yet the Blackhail guide foiled his clan so absolutely he sent it spiraling down into hell" Bram felt hairs prickle along his arms. "He trained no replacement. He died with his stone in the darkness of night and the next day Blackhail was doomed. There was no one to step in and guide the clan in the days when it most needed guiding. Fatal mistakes were made. The remains of the Hailstone were left to lie on open ground, in plain sight of clan. The Walk of Secession was not performed, and clansmen and clanswomen walked with the tainted powder at their waists and did not know it was tainted. A new clan guide was brought in from Scarpe and hauled half of the Scarpestone north in a cart. This monstrosity was hallowed five nights back. The crimes against the gods are many and continue, and while Blackhail lives with an alien stone at its heart it will never rise from the hole dug by its own guide."

It was close to dark now and Bram could no longer see Ogmore's face. He wondered how the guide knew so much about Blackhail, then remembered Wrayan's speech about the birds.

'Tell me now," Drouse Ogmore said, his voice spun with small prickles, "who is most important: warrior or guide?"

Bram bowed his head. The morion started the room rocking one final time. "Guide."

Drouse Ogmore left the word in silence so Bram could feel the waves it created. Minutes passed as they stared at each other and only when it was frill dark and the only light in the room came from smoke-nres next door did Ogmore speak.

"Castlemilk needs an apprentice guide. If I die we need someone to continue the ways of the stone. The mistakes of Blackhail cannot be ignored. The Milkstone must be protected. And known. I must teach someone the places to drill and not to drill, the weak points, the oil reservoirs, the hollows that must never fill with ice. Knowledge of the old ceremonies must be passed on, for someone in this clan must always know how to mount a Chief Watch, replace and hallow a new guidestone, accept the oaths of its warriors, choose lores for its newborns and chisel hearts. Such are the dealing of a guide, and I would pass them on to you."

"Will I learn the histories?" Bram asked.

Ogmore looked at him strangely. "Scholars do not make good guides."

Bram opened his mouth to ask why, but Ogmore forestalled him with a raised hand.

"We will speak no more. Do not give me your answer now. I know you work hard at your swordsmanship under Selco and Burmish. I also know you spend two hours in the dairy each morning, performing the simple task necessary for feeding clan. Both of these endeavors are right and fitting. For now I would have you continue all of them, including assisting me in this house, but know this: I will ask for a choice. When sufficient time has passed for contemplation I will call you into the presence of the Milkstone and an answer must be given." Drouse Ogmore walked to the edge of the table and leant across it so that his face was inches away from Bram's. "I saw you that day when you touched the stone—it reached toward you. You must decide if you are willing to reach back."

The guide pushed himself to upright and left the room. Bram sat alone in the darkness and watched as smoke poured under the door.